I like DB's Anti-Spam Question mod. Excellent choice. I have that one inactive right now, but only because I somehow messed it up, and I need to fix it.

I also have Carsten's Spamfruits, which continues to stop many spam-bots.

But ggn's CAPTCHA hack is what allows me to have open registrations without approval. Plus, this allows for guest posting as well. A good example of guest posting being allowed is at Dandello's test bed forum (check it out at near the bottom of her General Board).

By the way, DB authored ggn's CAPTCHA hack as a mod for the next release of YaBB.

« Last Edit: Jul 2nd, 2013 at 8:18pm by Bill Myers »

Morning, noon, or night, have a great one!

Note: Like most others, this forum doesn't allow us to freely edit our posts or topics to make corrections as needed, so please remember to look for subsequent posts if you see any mistakes or outdated information. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I love the simplicity of ggn's CAPTCHA it just causes problems to the people that are attracted to my forum.

I understand.

What that will mean, of course, is that you'll have to continue managing the errors you get, and limit your forum to members only in terms of being able to post. I just wanted other admins to know that they can stop spam-bots cold if that's what they choose to do. They can also freely allow for instant registrations without worry.

Bottom line: Admins should simply do what they think works best for their forum, and accept the results of what they've chosen to do.

Morning, noon, or night, have a great one!

Note: Like most others, this forum doesn't allow us to freely edit our posts or topics to make corrections as needed, so please remember to look for subsequent posts if you see any mistakes or outdated information. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Because spam-bots have been stopped cold since January of 2011 in our forum, we don't even need to have Referral Security activated. No worries about what to check or uncheck.How sweet it's been, and still is so far.

Morning, noon, or night, have a great one!

Note: Like most others, this forum doesn't allow us to freely edit our posts or topics to make corrections as needed, so please remember to look for subsequent posts if you see any mistakes or outdated information. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I think any one of us can become redundant when trying to offer help. I can be particularly redundant; much too verbose. Sorry.

I feel badly that you're still having problems. I was sure that one of YaBB's resident experts would have been able to help. But you're an attentive admin who seems to be as persistent as I am when trying to figure out what to do, so I suspect the problems you're having will be solved in due time.

Hang in there. I wish you the best.

Morning, noon, or night, have a great one!

Note: Like most others, this forum doesn't allow us to freely edit our posts or topics to make corrections as needed, so please remember to look for subsequent posts if you see any mistakes or outdated information. Sorry for the inconvenience.

At this point, an issue with the host/server is not outside the realm of possibility. There are other large and busy YaBB forums out there and I haven't seen a report of any of them having similar issues either using 2.4 or newer versions.

(And I also suspect a server issue as - in theory - the Guardian IP blocks in .htaccess shouldn't have allowed for multiple copies of the same IP address in the .htaccess because those IPs shouldn't have been able to reach YaBB to trigger Guardian into adding them after they were added the first time.)

If you only have one solution to a problem you're not trying hard enough!

(And I also suspect a server issue as - in theory - the Guardian IP blocks in .htaccess shouldn't have allowed for multiple copies of the same IP address in the .htaccess because those IPs shouldn't have been able to reach YaBB to trigger Guardian into adding them after they were added the first time.)

My thinking as well.

I had to stop Guardian from adding IPs because the file was growing way to big. There is a .htaccess in the YaBB folder and one in the YaBB/Variables folder. If I remember correctly it was the .htaccess in YaBB/Variables that the Guardian was adding the IPs. I'm going to turn it back on again and see what happens.

Edited:

The Guardian is writing to the .htaccess in the Yabb folder. Its the ban_log.txt in the YaBB/Variables folder thats getting written to there

The ban_log in Variables lists attempts from banned IPs to access the forum. But if .htaccess in YaBB's 'root' has those IPs already blocked, YaBB shouldn't be registering the attempt as it should have been blocked before reaching YaBB.pl.

So based on your description, .htaccess is being written to but the server isn't using it to block access. And that is a server issue.

If you only have one solution to a problem you're not trying hard enough!

If it turns out I'm right and your spammers are trying to use all number user names and you need to have Encrypt ID turned on, the fix is:

In case any of you missed the first part of this discussion, and as a reference to those of you who are getting errors because of spam-bots that use "all number user names" as Dandello mentions above, as I confirmed here in my post following hers, she's correct about how to take care of this problem.

Note: Like most others, this forum doesn't allow us to freely edit our posts or topics to make corrections as needed, so please remember to look for subsequent posts if you see any mistakes or outdated information. Sorry for the inconvenience.